


Bugg

by Sheffield



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I imagine you're planning to jump me as soon as you get the chance, detective. But I'm afraid I'm ahead of you. There's no way out, and with a shotgun I don't need to be a good shot. I pull the trigger and anything in this hallway is going to be shredded. You and your partner can be prisoners, or you can be dead. Choose now."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bugg

The Loft, Sunday morning

Jim Ellison's world had narrowed to one unquestionable fact: if he opened his eyes his head would fall off.

The pain started in between his shoulder blades, knifed up the back of his neck and then gripped the whole of his head in a vice... and squeezed. He needed to drink some water - about a gallon, cold, fresh, oh yes... nope. There was a flaw in that plan. If he tried to get up and fetch some water he would have to open his eyes first and then his head really would fall off.

"Here."

The noise made him wince, but the touch on his hand was warm and soothing. He managed to sit up and keep his head attached to his shoulders by carefully keeping his eyes tightly shut while he did it. He took the bottle of water that was handed him, still without opening his eyes. God, that was good. He tilted his head back and chugged down the whole quart and then nerved himself for the ordeal of finally facing the world.

Light - agh! - he dialled it down and managed to achieve focus. And - surprise surprise - the anxious face looking back at him was Blair's.

"You OK?"

"Do I look OK, Sandburg?"

Blair snorted.

"Good point. But Simon will be here in an hour. Are you up to giving a statement? We need to get our stories straight..."

 

Thirty six hours earlier...

As they walked up to the house Jim started shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"What is it?"

"Remember that cologne that one of your students bought you for Christmas?"

"The stuff that you, quote, accidentally, quote, dropped in the sink and broke? What about it?"

"I think this guy must have showered in it."

"What, you're smelling it through the door? Cool! We have to do some tests on how your sense of smell is affected by..."

Jim glared, knocked on the door, and Blair shut up. He knew better than to talk about Sentinel stuff while they were questioning an informant, even one as unpromising as Lionel Bugg was likely to turn out to be. Bugg - what a stupid name. And this was a stupid job; a retired accountant, a new house in Cascade, some story about drugs, neighbours, only talking to the cop of the year. Waste of time. But, when Simon says...

The man who answered the door to them looked just like his name sounded; short, mousey, timid and middle aged.

"Detective Ellison?"

Jim showed his badge and introduced his partner.

"Blair Sandburg, my associate. You said in your call that you had some information for me?"

"Yes, yes, of course. Come in."

Jeez, this guy was nervous. He closed the door in their faces while he took off the security chain, then opened up. Blair followed Jim inside, down the narrow unfurnished hallway.

"Stop there, both of you."

They turned. The mousey little man was now ten feet away, holding a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun pointing unwaveringly at their midriffs. Blair looked nervous and uncertain - they really had to have words some time about that Blessed Protector thing not being a substitute for kevlar - but raised his hands and looked to Jim for a lead.

Where had the gun come from? The man had had empty hands when he opened the door. Then Jim saw the jury-rigged bracket on the back of the door: of course. And the cologne he reeked of had covered the scent of gun oil. So what were they going to do? He was only one nerdy little guy, after all...

"I imagine you're planning to jump me as soon as you get the chance, detective. But I'm afraid I'm ahead of you. There's no way out, and with a shotgun I don't need to be a good shot. I pull the trigger and anything in this hallway is going to be shredded. You and your partner can be prisoners, or you can be dead. Choose now."

"Let's not get excited, Mr. Bugg. What is it that you want?"

"Well, shall we start with your gun, detective? Mr. Sandburg, why don't you take Detective Ellison's gun and put it on the floor."

Blair looked at Jim, saw the slight nod, gingerly took Jim's gun out of its resting place in the holster on Jim's belt and placed it on the ground.

"Slide it over to me."

Blair pushed at it with the side of his foot and slid it towards the gunman.

"Good. Now. Are you wearing a back up in that little ankle holster you wear sometimes, I wonder?"

"Not today."

They had been going to see some little geeky informant: a retired accountant, for goodness sake. Why would he need his backup gun?

"Show me."

Jim hitched up his pantlegs and showed his ankles. Bugg grinned at him and gestured with the shotgun. Jim raised his hands again obediently.

"All right. That's stage one. Now, Detective Ellison, would you use your cuffs on Mr. Sandburg please?"

"What?"

"The choice is still yours, of course. He can be cuffed, or he can be dead. Choose now."

"It's OK, Jim," Blair said quietly, holding out his wrists.

"Ah - er, no. Behind your back please."

Blair hesitated a second but then turned and crossed his wrists behind him. Jim, slowly, reluctantly, took out his cuffs and used them on his partner. He also took advantage of having his body between Blair's and Bugg's and quietly dropped his spare cuff key into Blair's palm. His partner, ever quick on the uptake, curled his hands into loose fists, concealing the little sliver of metal.

Then they turned round and Bugg gestured again for Jim to put up his hands. As he obeyed, he saw Bugg reach into his pocket and produce a black tangle of straps.

"No." he said at once.

"Yes." Bugg said flatly, throwing the thing towards Jim, "I think so. We've disarmed you, Sentinel. Now we need to disarm your Guide. It's the same choice. You can put the gag on him, or you can watch him die. Choose now."

"I'm getting really tired of that line." Jim muttered.

Blair's eyes were wider now, a little more worried, but he looked at Jim steadily and murmured, again,

"It's OK," and opened his mouth for the gag. It was a wedge of something hard to bite down on, and then two narrow leather ties that held it in place. There was an air-hole through the wedge. Jim fastened the thing on Blair reluctantly, carefully; making sure to check that his partner's breathing wasn't impaired.

"Good. All right then, let's move on. Detective Ellison, I want you to put your arms around Mr. Sandburg, as if you were giving him a big hug."

Ah. Jim had been waiting for the moment when Bugg decided to get close to him. But, like this, there was nothing he could do. Feeling foolish, protective, and furious, all at once, he wrapped his arms around Blair. Blair looked up at him and, his face disfigured by the gag, still managed a reassuring grin. They stood there for a second, breastbone to breastbone, each feeling his partner's heart pounding against his own. But in that position, with Blair between him and Bugg, there wasn't anything Jim could do except submit to having his own wrists locked into a pair of padded restraints.

"All right, you can separate now."

Blair ducked under Jim's arms as Jim lifted bound wrists to clear him.

"OK, Detective, move down the corridor. It's the last door."

Jim moved, but as Blair moved to follow him Bugg said sharply,

"No. Stay where you are, Sandburg."

And then Bugg had his hand buried in Blair's hair and the other hand was holding the shotgun pressed up into the hinge of Blair's jaw and they were sooooo fucked. Jim, standing there out of range with his wrists tied, had never felt so helpless.

"All right gentlemen. Now we can move on to stage two. The door is open; go on in."

Jim walked in. It was an empty living room: wooden floors, high windows, huge. Even though it was a bright sunny spring day the room was as cold as if the house had been standing empty all winter. All right, it was an empty living room in an enormous, expensive, empty house. Empty apart from two things: an object covered with a sheet - perhaps a chair? And a chain. Hanging from a pulley arrangement fixed to the ceiling.

Bugg stood still in the doorway, holding Blair in front of him like a shield.

"Stand under the pulley."

Jim, reluctant, wary, nevertheless had no choice but to obey.

"Put the shackles on your feet."

There was a metal bar on the ground beneath the chain and it had two shackles, one at either end. He clicked them shut around his ankles and stood still, his ankles locked apart.

"Now the hook."

He didn't want to co-operate. He really, really didn't want to wind up hanging like a piece of meat from a hook in the ceiling. But he couldn't get close enough to jump Bugg, and with his feet locked apart like this he wasn't going to do much jumping, and anyway Bugg had Blair. He looked over at Blair, trying to convey reassurance, grimaced slightly, and then hooked the cuffs on his wrists over the hook at the end of the chain. Bugg took something from his pocket, like a remote, and pressed. The chain moved, and Jim moved with it. And there he was, feet locked apart by the shackles and arms above his head. Bugg stopped the chain before he was lifted off his feet altogether. Small mercies.

Satisfied that he had Ellison immobilised, Bugg turned to Blair. He pushed the anthropologist over to the mysterious object and pulled off the sheet. A chair. High backed, wooden armed, with a tangle of metal stuck on the back of it; the whole thing bolted securely to the floor. He pushed Blair down into it, and then fastened straps around his chest and waist, holding him in place. Then, humming softly to himself, he fastened one last strap around Blair's throat and checked behind the chair, made sure the strap wasn't twisted or caught.

He walked over to Jim.

"All right. Now we can proceed. As you will have guessed by now, my name isn't Lionel Bugg. I'm not going to tell you my real name, because I really don't want to kill you - either of you - unless I absolutely have to. So please bear that in mind; if you co-operate you'll live through this. Now. Ellison, I want you to listen to this tape."

He hadn't noticed a cassette player lying on the floor against the wall; Bugg walked over to it and pressed play. They all listened for a moment to a voice speaking some foreign language. Maybe Japanese, Chinese?

"And now I'd like you to focus your hearing, find the person with that voice, and tell me where he is."

And then it hit him, in comically slow motion, like one of those cartoon characters who walks off a cliff without noticing. With a shock, as if he had suddenly been hit full face by a bucket of cold water, Jim realised what Bugg had called him, back in the entrance hall. Sentinel. And Blair, Guide. Disarm your guide, he had said when he made him gag Blair. He knew. How could Bugg know?

"I work in industrial espionage," Bugg was saying, as if he could hear Jim thinking, "and you really should know better, Mr. Sandburg. Anyone who keeps his research notes on the same laptop he uses to surf the Internet is just asking for trouble. The only secure computer is one that isn't connected to anything at all. So, yes, I know all about your Sentinel abilities, Jim. I can call you Jim, can't I?"

If all else fails, try charm. Jim turned the full force of his smile on their captor and said carefully,

"It seems you're in control here, Mr. Bugg. I guess you can call me anything you want."

Bugg smiled back, and for a second Jim thought he'd done some good...

"Oh that was nice. I'm getting a warm fuzzy feeling here. But I'm afraid I've read all those police training manuals about hostage negotiation, too, so please don't delude yourself that this is getting you anywhere. Now. I asked you to trace the voice on the tape?"

Jim made a big thing of closing his eyes and seeming to be listening.

"Can't hear him. Sorry."

"Oh, I'm sorry too, Jim. But I think Blair is going to be sorrier."

He pointed the remote at Blair and pressed one of the controls. Something whirred, like machinery starting up. The strap around Blair's throat started to move... no, to tighten. Blair's eyes were suddenly wide with fear and his head was pressed back against the wooden back of the chair, as far as he could go, but the strap was pulling tighter, cutting off his air supply....

"Stop it! Bugg, I swear, if you hurt him you're a dead man..."

"I estimate he has thirty seconds before his neck breaks, so you should really concentrate on finding the voice..."

"He's over there, about two hundred yards away, asking someone to fetch him some coffee... now turn it off. Now!"

Smiling, Bugg pressed another control and the mechanism reversed, until the strap around Blair's neck was loose enough for him to breathe. Jim listened, anguished, to the panicked sound of Blair breathing desperately through his nose, trying to fend off a full-scale panic attack.

"All right Blair? Nod your head so Jim can see you're not hurt."

His breathing was too shallow and fast and his heart was pounding like a drum but he nodded his head.

"What is this, Bugg? What do you want?"

"I want you to shut up except when I ask you to speak. Can you do that, Jim?"

He walked up to Jim, held the remote lovingly, pointed it at Blair and pretended to turn on the motor that tightened the garrotte around Blair's neck. Jim quickly nodded his acquiescence and Bugg smiled.

"Good. All right. Now. Back to the tape. I want you to repeat what you hear."

He pressed play again and, after a second or two, Jim protested.

"I can't repeat something I don't understand. What is that - Chinese? Japanese?"

"Korean. And you're not being asked to translate it, just repeat it."

Jim listened intently and then repeated a few nonsense syllables and then lost the thread of what came next...

"There's a technique to it. You shouldn't think, just repeat. You need to talk and listen at the same time - there won't be a chance for you to speak into the pauses. It takes a bit of practice. So practice."

Jim tried again, managed a few more phrases, fell silent.

"It took me an hour to grasp the technique. Watch."

Bugg took a deep breath and then began to speak, chanting along with the tape but with a couple of seconds' time-lag between the voice on the tape and his repetition.

He stopped and looked expectantly at Jim.

"See? Don't think about it. Imagine the words going from your ears to your mouth without going through your brain at all. We have a couple of hours for you to get it. And I'll only hurt Blair if I think you aren't trying."

Jim tried, god knows he tried, but he couldn't get the trick of it with Bugg prowling around the room and the fear in Blair's eyes and the ache of his wrists and the sun shining in his eyes and...

 

"Jim. Jim! Come on now buddy, I really need you here. Come on. Follow my voice, you know the routine. Come back to me, because, I have to tell you, we're really in trouble here and you have to get us out of it, man, because this is getting serious..."

His guide was in trouble; he needed him. Jim came to with a sobbing intake of breath. Oh god, had he lost it so far that he'd stopped breathing again? He hung in his chains for a moment, trying to stop his heart from pounding so hard, trying to get it together, trying to gauge what their situation was before he opened his eyes and let Bugg know he was back.

Bugg was behind him, prowling. Blair was still in front of him. He risked a glance at his partner and took in, in one gestalt second, that he was still in the chair, still had the strap around his neck, but otherwise seemed to be OK. And he had his wits about him, too; all Jim had done was open and shut his eyes but Blair got it straight away.

"He's got headphones on; thinks I have some kind of hypnotic powers or something. That's why he gagged me, so I couldn't work my mojo on him. You zoned, Jim. About ten minutes. Listen, if you have to do this repetition thing I think the trick of it is that you'll need to let go and relax. You can do it. Or do you want me to use the key and try to get out of the chair? I think I can wriggle under the straps."

"No!"

He made it an artistic groan but he heard Blair's soft "OK" in response.

And then Bugg was there, forcing the gag back between Blair's jaws and then turning to his other prisoner. He took Jim's face in his hands and tilted him up. He pulled off the headphones he was wearing and then spoke.

"Back with us, detective? Lucky for you I'd read all those notes about your 'zones' or I might have let you stop breathing altogether. All right, let's get back to work. I need you to master the knack of repeating what's on the tape, and I need you to get it fast."

"I need Blair."

"Well? He's right there. He isn't going anywhere."

"I need his help. If you've read his work you know what he is; he's my Guide. He helps me concentrate, stops me zoning."

"Well that's a shame, but I'm not going to have him working his tricks on me. So he stays gagged unless you zone again, and you need to get to work if you want him to stay alive to do it."

Bugg turned on the tape again and Jim tried, again, to get the trick of it, to repeat the nonsense syllables without waiting for a pause. But it was too hard, he just plain couldn't do it.

"OK, let's try something."

Bugg came towards him with a strip of cloth in his hands.

"No!"

Jim's protest was instinctive, fervent. He didn't want to be blindfolded, cut off from one of his senses. But he was tied and helpless and Bugg ignored him and did it anyway. And, wrapped in darkness, he found that, somehow, it actually was easier to get the trick of what Bugg wanted him to do. Without Blair's eyes on him, without Bugg's gaze, he could let go of his inhibitions. It wasn't, actually, a question of his senses at all, but merely a question of embarrassment. In the dark he could imagine he was alone, and when he did that it was easy, in the way that you can disco dance, or belly dance, or imitate Jackie Chan or Robert de Niro, alone in your room when you'd rather die than do any of that in front of someone else.

So he let go, and started to speak in a higher, thinner, tone like the voice on the tape, and wrapped his mouth around the unfamiliar syllables and, after a while, he realised with a shock that he had got it, that he was doing it.

And then Bugg took off the blindfold and patted his cheek proprietorially.

"Oh well done. I knew this would work. Hah!"

Jim blinked at the light and said nothing.

"I'm not asking you to do anything that offends your Sentinel instincts; you aren't being asked to betray 'the tribe'. I'm not into espionage except of the industrial kind. The guy on the tape, the guy sitting in that house a hundred yards up the road, is the CEO of an electronics company. And over the next few hours there's going to be a meeting over there that will decide whether a merger goes through or not. And I'm being paid more money than you can imagine, to bug the meeting."

He was pacing the room gleefully, hugging his own cleverness to himself.

"They said it couldn't be done. They're obsessively sweeping for bugs every couple of hours. All the personnel are screened too; no-one is going to get a handle on the meeting that way. The house was chosen for the meeting because it's well hidden from the road so you can't use a parabolic mike on the windows... and then I remembered this guy Brackett and the information he was offering to sell about an undetectable bug, and I looked a little deeper, and I found you. My undetectable bug."

He grinned at Jim as if he had invented him.

"So here's the deal. You listen in. You repeat what you hear. I tape it. When we're done, you walk. You baulk, and I kill your Guide. You don't speak Korean, I checked, so you have no way of lying to me - you can't fake idiomatic Korean off the top of your head - so you can't edit. Just repeat what you hear and everything will be fine."

"Say I agree; how long is this meeting going to last?"

"As long as it takes. Why?"

"Because my arms ache, my legs ache, Blair's cold, we both need water, we're going to want to use the bathroom - have you thought it through? There's more to keeping hostages than just snatching them."

Bugg looked at him and narrowed his eyes.

"You stay where you are. He stays where he is. No bathroom privileges, sorry. I'm sure we can all survive a little inconvenience if anyone has an accident. You might want some water but I don't believe either of you _needs_ water yet; you've only been here a couple of hours. Oh, but I wouldn't want Blair to be cold."

He took a heavy cashmere overcoat from its hook behind the door and tucked it around Blair where he sat, carefully checking that it didn't impede the garrotte around his neck. Blair's heartrate and breathing went through the roof when Bugg approached him but went back to normal quickly afterwards. And at least his Guide had stopped shivering. Small victories.

Jim's mind was racing, trying to see their way out of this situation. What harm would it do for him to comply with what Bugg was demanding? He had no way of knowing what information he was giving their captor, but the story was likely enough. If it had been a government safe house it might have been different: he wouldn't, knowingly, betray his country. But was it worth both their lives to stop one multinational from screwing another multinational over some deal? He didn't know: the best he could do would be to comply, escape, and get Bugg - or whatever his name really was - later. If they survived.

"Say I agree to do what you're asking, how do we know you aren't going to put us down when it's over?"

"Put you down? You mean kill you both? Oh no, Jim, I would never do that. You're priceless. An undetectable bug, one that I can sneak into any meeting, past any security? And that no-one else knows about? No, no, my friend, you're much too valuable to kill. I'll let you both go, if only because then I know where you are, next time I want your services."

Bugg patted Jim's cheek again and Jim ignored him, loathing the feeling of being helpless, having hands on him. Blair's eyes were on him but the anthropologist was somewhere else, concentrating fiercely. Jim felt a thread of hope: maybe Blair could see a way out of this situation that he couldn't. Thank heavens for a smart partner.

"Let's begin." Bugg switched on the tape recorder.

"Locate the voice you heard before and repeat what he's saying. Get who he's talking to as well: give me both sides of the conversation."

Jim listened intently and identified the house, the CEO, the other people in the room with him.

"There are three of them," he reported.

"What are they saying?"

Jim tried to repeat their words but, again, he couldn't get the trick of it. Bugg looked at him, trying to gauge whether he was faking it, but then simply walked over and, without comment, blindfolded him again.

 

"Jim? Jim? If you can hear me, buddy, come back. We're still in deep, deep, do-do here and I need you to wake up. Come on Jim, enough is enough, man! You've been zoned for, like, fifteen minutes and if you don't show signs of waking up I think he's going to start thinking I'm faking it and who knows what he'll do then..."

There was real fear in his Guide's voice but some instinct told him to stay still, not reveal that he was hearing that voice that called him home...

"Jim, I'm going to assume you're back and you're faking it. If you are, can you, like, I don't know, twitch your foot for me or something?"

He was hanging from his wrists, wrapped in velvet darkness, aching from head to foot. But he could move his foot - he tried, anyway, and something must have worked, because Blair's voice changed timbre completely. He was happy. He had made his Guide happy. That was good, wasn't it? But why was it so dark...

"Jim! We're still at the house - Bugg's house, remember? God, your arms must be sore, hanging like that. I wish I could get him to let you down, but he won't even let me talk to him. I wish I did have these hypnotic powers he imagines... I wonder where he got these weird ideas about what a Guide does? It can't be anything in my notes... wonder if he's got another source... oh, right, this isn't helping. Look, Jim, I know you don't like it any more than I do, but I figure there isn't any way out except for you to do what he's asking. I think he's genuine about letting us go, and I have a couple of ideas about that anyway. But I want you to zone - I mean fake a zone, obviously, not really zone, like this - as often as you can get away with it, so we don't give him too much. Enough to keep us alive, but not enough for him to want to do this again, that's the key. OK?"

Jim couldn't maintain his position any longer, he had to get the weight off his wrists, which meant revealing that he was awake enough to stand upright again. He scrambled to his feet and shook his head angrily, as if he could shake off the blindfold that impeded him.

It went on. There was no way out. The darkness cloaked him and, in that darkness, he could hear Blair breathing, hard, fighting for every breath against the unyielding solidity of the gag. He had to will himself, consciously will himself, to push his hearing out, out past the confines of their prison, out of the room, out of the house, out to the place where the unknown men were having their billion dollar meeting.

They were there, he heard them. He had to concentrate, hard, on not listening to them, on not trying to understand. He tried to do as Bugg had taught him, to take in what was said and then immediately give it back out, like breathing, in, out...

He zoned, again and again, hour after hour. There was nothing he could do about it, no need to fake it: it just happened. Again and again, he would find himself hanging from his abused wrists, Blair's voice softly calling him back, calling him home. But, in between, he must be getting enough of the meeting on tape for Bugg to be getting the gist, because every time the blindfold was removed he saw Bugg's face, grinning. He was going to see that face in his nightmares for a long time.

 

"Jim? Jim? Come on, come back, you can do it. If you're with us, you should know our friendly neighbourhood kidnapper is talking about it all being over soon and he said something about taking me with him and I am, like, seriously freaking out here, you know? Oh for crying out loud, Jim, this is SO not the time for you to do your wooden indian impression... actually, that's kind of an offensive metaphor, now that I think about it, but I'm just rambling here, hoping it'll be enough to bring you out of it. Although it would be kind of interesting, you have to admit, to do some tests on what it is, exactly, that brings you out of a zone. I mean, Bugg-bear has decided it's some kind of Guide-voodoo that I and only I can do, but there must have been lots of times, before we ever met, when you zoned on something and what brought you out of it then? You know? It can't just be me - of course I kind of wish it was, especially if I really could work my magic on all and sundry... can you see it? The Amazing Sandburg! He sees all, he knows all! Hey maybe it works on girls? Do wonders for my love life..."

"Now I know I'm back," Jim said hoarsely, "Sandburg's scheming about his love life, everything's back to normal."

Blair had time for an appreciative grin before Bugg was back, busy forcing his jaws apart for the gag, before taking off the headphones and turning back to Jim.

"Well, detective, we're almost there. The last bit you put on tape for me gave me most of what I wanted; we're down to the detail now, so I'm going to ignore the way you're zoning out on me. I'm guessing there's some faking going on here - but I'm sure I'll enjoy reading all about what's causing the zones and how we can refine our technique for our next meeting, once your partner gets back to work. Now. One more effort, and we can talk about letting you both go."

"No! No blindfold. I don't need it any more, I've got the knack now."

Bugg looked unconvinced, so Jim listened intently and started repeating the conversation going on up the road. Bugg scrambled to switch on his tape, dropping the blindfold in his haste. But Jim simply wanted to keep his eye on Blair while he finished the job. If Bugg was talking about taking his guide somewhere he wanted to know about it, and there was no chance he would be able to concentrate on listening and repeating if he had to worry about Bugg spiriting Blair off somewhere while he did it.

But, without the blindfold, he found it even harder to keep his focus and, after no more than a few sentences, he felt himself starting to wander. Bugg hit him across the face and he lost his balance and hung from his bound wrists a moment, breathing heavily, his lip cut and bleeding.

"No more zones. Listen and repeat. Concentrate," Bugg ordered. The blindfold was coming towards him so he simply looked Bugg in the eye and said,

"Lay a hand on Sandburg and it's over, understand me? You touch him and the next time I see you, I'm not a cop. And you're dead."

Bugg smirked.

"You're the good guy, Ellison. It isn't going to happen: I'm not impressed."

"Your research needs some work. Look at my career before I joined the cops. You harm Blair and I will kill you."

Blindfold. A hand patting his cheek. The blood wiped gently from his lip.

"Be a good little bug and nothing will happen to either of you."

 

"Well, that's it."

Bugg turned off the tape recorder with a decisive click.

Jim anxiously tried to rub off the blindfold against his shoulder and he heard Bugg's laughter as the kidnapper moved to assist him.

"Yes, all right, you can look again. See: nobody did anything to your Guide while you were working. You can trust me, Jim. We worked well together. If you weren't such a straight arrow, I'd offer you a part time consultancy. I could really use you in lots of my work. As it is, we'll probably have to go through some more unpleasantness the next time we work together, but I hope you've learned at least that I keep my word."

"Just turn us loose and get out of here, Bugg," Jim growled. Blair was still all right, still covered up by the cashmere coat, only his face visible, the straps on the gag cutting into the corners of his mouth. But his eyes were alert, fixed on Jim with some meaning he couldn't discern.

"Ah. Turning you loose. Yes. We need to talk about that."

Bugg put the cassette player into a square black case, checked the room carefully, making sure he hadn't left anything else.

"What's to talk about?"

"OK, here's a scenario... I untie you and turn to walk away. You jump me, I wind up in jail... see what I mean? Not going to happen. So how else can we do it? Here's a second scenario. I walk away, leave the two of you here, drop a dime from my safe house in another state... the police race to your rescue, you go home, everything's fine. And then in a few weeks you track me down, I go to jail. We have a big trial scene... yes, he kidnapped me and my partner, testifies detective Ellison. Yes, he kidnapped me and my partner, testifies police observer Sandburg. Make a deal with the DA or I reveal your Sentinel abilities to the world, I say, but you call my bluff and I go to jail... still not going to happen, you follow?"

"You ARE going to jail, Bugg, sooner or later. All you get to choose is how long for. Let us go and it will go easier on you, you know that. You're a smart guy."

Bugg looked pained.

"Please don't interrupt me, detective. I have everything I want from you right now, and it would distress me greatly if you managed to irritate me enough that I simply killed you. As I think I explained, I hope to make use of your abilities again when the occasion arises. So let me explain the scenario that I like."

He was taking something from the black bag as he spoke...

"I walk away with Blair; in half an hour I turn him loose and he runs to your rescue. By that time I'm long gone and you can go back to your lives. And then, in a while, as I fully expect, you track me down, and I'm arrested..."

Bugg came towards Jim with something in his hands and Jim flinched away, struggling against the thing Bugg was pressing between his lips, wedging his jaw open, threading the tube into his mouth...

"...and I go to trial and my smart, smart lawyer - and you just know I have a smart lawyer, don't you, Jim? - asks for your medical records in evidence."

He took a bottle of malt whiskey out of the bag... Jim distantly catalogued it as Tallisker, a brand he'd never tried...

"...and, look here, detective. You were discovered hanging from a hook in an empty house. Your blood alcohol levels were through the roof..."

...and it had a peppery aftertaste that wasn't, of itself, unpleasant; it was just that being force-fed with half a bottle on an empty stomach was too much; choking, bitter, powerless...

"...and your pants were round your ankles. Are you quite sure you were kidnapped, detective? And not engaged in some bizarre sexual experiment, say?"

So that was it. Destroy his credibility as a witness. He would have a hard enough job explaining why they'd been taken without revealing the real reason, bringing the Sentinel thing out into the public arena. Found drunk and half-naked, he would be a laughing-stock...

"And your only corroborative evidence is the testimony of your partner...who, co-incidentally, shares your address... and who was found wandering the less salubrious parts of town with some extremely illegal substances in his bloodstream..."

It was going straight to his head, the room swimming, Blair's face pulsing in and out of focus. Bugg was looking at him coldly, disdainfully, as if he were a bug pinned to a card. Yes, that was it: Bugg's bug, that's me, he thought drunkenly. But where did that leave Blair?

What's wrong with this picture? Blair, slumped in the chair, had grown three feet taller. Maybe the garrotte had come on again, but he'd found a way to beat it, so it had stretched his neck up. Like a giraffe. He grinned at his own image. Blair wouldn't ever be called shortstuff again. Bugg was blurring himself, and Blair was growing taller by the minute. No that's not it. He shook his head decisively but Bugg seemed to think he was fighting the tube and the malt still flowing and just held his head again. But Blair wasn't growing. Nosiree. He was a trained detective: he'd figured it out. Blair had stood up, that was all. And he wasn't growing wings. Nope. No wings. It was a coat. He was on his feet, out of the cuffs, and he was going to make exactly the right move.

Blair threw the coat over Bugg's head in a flying tackle that took the kidnapper down, and he cuffed the bad guy, proudly, with Jim's own cuffs. Then he faced Jim with an entirely-too-stern look on his face and snapped irritably, "Jim, mind telling me what, exactly, you're giggling at?"

 

"How's the head?"

"Don't."

Blair had encouraged him to throw up, as soon as he'd lowered him from that pulley and unfastened his wrists, so they'd managed to get some of the alcohol out of his system. But in the end it's just a mathematical formula: bodyweight [x] and alcohol content [y] takes time [t] to be absorbed by the system...

"No cops! Not yet."

He was still too drunk. Lying on the bathroom floor in the empty house, still keeping track of Bugg's presence, cuffed to the chair in the downstairs room, Jim snarled denial at Blair. They could still lose, they could still be destroyed by this. He retched again, holding onto the toilet like it was his best friend in the world, and tried to re-order his scattered thoughts. No cops. Not yet. He had to get the alcohol out of his system first. Bugg had to go down, but it had to be clean. Nothing about sentinels and guides, and no chance for him to use his drugs-and-alcohol scenarios to discredit his victims.

Think, Ellison, he told himself. Think!

"Come on, man, this is crazy. We just have to call Simon. Right now!"

Jim glared at him and Blair switched fluently from assertive partner to the dreaded puppy-dog eyes.

"Please? Jim?"

Jim gripped the toilet bowl and stared mournfully into the pine-scented depths as if all the answers were there...

 

"Jim, come on now. Up you get. That's it. On your feet, soldier. Let's walk a little."

"Don' wanna."

"Don't care. Come on. You zoned on a toilet bowl, buddy, which means in my book that it's DEFINITELY time to move on."

"You're my best friend..."

"Yes I am. Simon! Thank god!"

"Siiiiiiimon! You're my best friend, too."

Blair and Simon looked at each other.

"I really love you guys."

"That's nice, Jim..."

"Naw.... I really, really, really reallyreallyreally...."

He became fascinated by the sound of the word,

"reallyreallyreallyreally..."

"Yes, Jim, you really love us. Come on, help me get him up. He hadn't had anything to eat or drink for the last twenty four hours until Bugg poured the best part of a bottle of single malt whiskey into him."

The uniformed patrolman helped Simon take Jim's weight from Blair. Jim focused carefully on the uniform.

"Hey, I really love you, man."

"That's nice, Detective."

"No, I REALLY love you. And Simon. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiimon! Hey!"

He went from drunken bonhomie to drunken belligerence in an instant.

"Hey Sandburg! I told you not to call Simon. Didn't I?"

"Yes, you did...."

"DIDN'T I?"

"Yes..."

"Didn't I? Didn't I tell you not to call Simon? Are you calling me a liar? Didn't I tell you not to call him? I did, didn't I? Didn't I?"

"Yes, Jim, you told me not to call Simon and I called him anyway."

"Didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Didn't I?"

"Yes. You absolutely did, man, and I absolutely did it anyway. And here he is. See? Here's Simon."

Back to bonhomie.

"Siiiiiiiiiiiiiimon. Hey, Simon, I love you, man."

"Emergency room, Sandburg?"

"No, let's just take him back to the loft and let him ralph his way out of it and then sleep it off."

No medical evidence. That was a good idea.

"Blair. Blaaaaaaaiiiiiiiir!!!! Hey, Blair, I really love you, man."

Blair giggled.

"I know you do, man. And, believe me, everybody is going to hear all about how you told us so. Right, Simon?"

Why was Simon laughing too?

"Oh yes, Ellison, this one goes everywhere!"

They helped him back down the stairs just as two more uniforms were escorting Bugg out to their car.

"Just a second," Blair said. Leaving Jim leaning on Simon, Blair stepped quickly forwards and said something to Bugg. He was supposed to hear stuff like that, he thought vaguely. Hey, his ears were drunk! But he could still give his partner moral support. Jim frowned sternly at Bugg and then grinned drunkenly at Blair to make sure his partner realised he wasn't aiming the frown-of-death at him. But Bugg was looking at the two of them, and his face was pale as death, and he turned away quickly and almost led the patrolmen to their car himself.

"I love you guys," Jim explained carefully, "but I don't love him. He's the bad guy. Hey! We kick bad guy ass! C'mere..."

"That's right, Jim," agreed Simon, holding his detective back -one handed, a miracle - "we're the good guys, and he's the bad guy."

"And besides," Jim said earnestly, "he really really BUGS me..."

In the end they had to carry him, giggling, to the car.

 

The loft, Sunday morning

"Please tell me I'm still drunk and this is just a nightmare?"

"Jim, what can I say? I'm sorry, but it's true. The two uniforms never made it back to the station - we found them unconscious, in their underwear, locked in the trunk, first thing this morning. Bugg is long gone."

"Er, Simon, this is going to sound like a really out-there question, but was there any evidence in the car that he was... sick, at all?"

Simon stared at Blair as if he had suddenly sprouted an extra head.

"How did you know that? There was vomit all over the scene, apparently."

"Yesssss!!!!!"

Blair punched the air, and Ellison winced at the noise.

"Sorry, Jim."

"Just keep it down, OK? That isn't too much to ask, is it? Anyway, give, Sandburg. What did you do?"

"Well, remember when you were telling us all how much you..."

"Don't SAY it Sandburg! Don't EVER say it! I know where you live..."

"Yea, well, I went up to Bugg and told him to stay away from you; that if he came near you, spoke about you, or even thought about you too hard, he would start to throw up his guts, and if he kept on he'd likely puke himself to death."

"Mojo! You Mojo-ed him?"

"You said it. Hey, the person doing the mojo doesn't have to believe it. All that matters is that the person receiving the mojo believes."

Simon interrupted.

"Is anyone ever planning on explaining to me what the two of you are talking about?"

"Bugg kept Blair gagged the whole time he had us, except when he needed him to bring me out of a zone, because he thought that being a 'guide' gave him some kind of magical hypnotic guide-mojo."

"And it's a well known fact that in many tribal cultures the power of a curse is inescapable, but only because the victim believes he's been cursed. In effect, he wills himself to suffer the effects."

"And you... made Bugg... puke up his guts... any time he thinks about Jim?"

Simon looked at the grinning face of the anthropologist with awe.

"Well," Blair said modestly, "he bugged me."

It had to be done.

"Hey, Darwin," Jim said, gathering up his ammunition, "that's MY line."

Blair disappeared under a hail of cushions.

Simon rose.

"Well, it looks like you have everything under control here, Jim. Be in my office 9am Monday... and no calling in sick."

"Police brutality!" came Sandburg's voice from behind the couch.

"Justifiable homicide," ruled Simon as he closed the door firmly behind him.

[top]


End file.
